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2024
Edwin breathes in shakily and Charles can hardly look at him because he’s very, very busy looking over his shoulder for the demonic spider that wants to eat them. “Charles, I love you.”
“Great, love you too. Can we go?” Charles bounces on his toes slightly, ready to run.
“Charles…I’m in love with you.”
“You wot, mate?” Charles stares at him, something enormous banging around in the back of his mind, like a raccoon lost in a dumpster. That’s immediately overshadowed by Edwin fully weeping and the distant scream of a thousand furious baby dolls. “Right, move, Edwin!”
He grips Edwin’s bicep and half-flings him up the stairs, sprinting after him to get a fist in Edwin’s stupid little pajamas so he can haul Edwin along to the sliver of light he can see so far above them.
“Hurry please,” the Night Nurse orders nervously and Charles just snarls at her, dragging Edwin along with every ounce of strength he possesses. He shoves Edwin ahead of him, feeling the stairs shake as the haunted spider chases them with thunderous steps.
They half-fly through the door, scrabbling along the floor to huddle together, fearfully turning back to watch her slam the door on that horrifying entity.
“Right,” she says, almost perfunctory except he can hear she’s still breathless from watching that screaming beast lunge at them all; whatever she is is not Hell-born, that’s for sure. “Time for goodbyes. We must be on our way.”
“In a moment,” Charles promises, ignoring Niko’s shocked face. “We’ve got something to sort first.” He grabs Edwin’s wrist and drags him into the little closet, ignoring the Night Nurse's sourly pursed face.
Edwin is different now, face clear and clothing unruffled. “Charles, what does she mean goodbyes?”
“Uh, that’s my bad,” Charles confesses. “The only way I could get her to open a door was to promise her we would go quietly.”
“You thought you would have time to make a plan,” Edwin says, gentle. “It is hard to plan down there.”
Charles nods. “Right. Right, but that’s a problem for after this: what do you mean you’re in love with me?”
Edwin’s pale brow furrows but he doesn’t break his serious gaze. “I did not intend to make you uncomfortable,” he begins and Charles grabs his elbow instinctively, keeping him close like there’s anywhere to go in this cramped closet.
“Nah, nah, it’s all good, mate. Just heat of the moment, huh? I’d make a pretty handsome Prince Charming.” He winks at Edwin and Edwin gives him a long suffering look.
“Charles.” Edwin draws himself up, just so he can look down the rigid swoop of his nose at Charles. “Do not mock me, please.”
“I wasn’t,” Charles says, somewhat taken aback. He squeezes Edwin’s elbow. “I wasn’t, mate, honest. I wouldn’t take the mickey out of you for something like that. Just all a bit sudden, yeah?”
“Charles,” Edwin sighs, “I have been in love with you for decades.”
“Oh.” That banging in the back of Charles’ brain is getting a lot louder, like a rockslide of memories crashing down a mountain just to bowl him over. “Ohhhhh.”
1991
Edwin taps on the edge of the desk, rhythmic enough that Charles should know what it means. He doesn’t.
He’s gotten the sense that Edwin was a bit of a swot, which only makes it endlessly more embarrassing that Charles can’t seem to pick up very basic code. He knew what Morse code was! It’s just, you know, no one’s bothered to use it in decades—let alone teach it in a school.
“Um, maybe a little slower,” Charles suggests, as cheerily as he can. He may not be smart, but he can grind away at things until something clicks.
Edwin studies him for a long moment and then scoops the book up and snaps it shut. Charles can feel his heart drop out of his chest as Edwin takes it away to reshelve it.
“Right.” He smiles bravely. “I can practice on my own, mate, I promise I’ll figure it out.”
“Nonsense,” Edwin says, running a proprietary finger over the spine of the book as he tips it back into place in the little ramshackle cubby they shoved in the corner. He turns very precisely back to Charles and grins. “Shall we go for a field trip, class?” He always sounds posh, even when he’s being silly.
“Where are we off to then?” Charles stands up easily, following Edwin to the door. Their little space here would be cramped for two living boys but it’s a pretty decent hideaway for two dead ones. They phase through the door together.
“To the seaside,” Edwin declares, holding his hand out to Charles hopefully. Charles takes it.
“To the seaside, then. Lead the way, teach.” Charles hasn’t the foggiest why they’re going to the sea, but a day by the sea is usually fun. This is the strange joy of being dead, eternal time and energy stretching out before them.
It’s why Charles hadn’t protested Edwin’s little teaching games. Edwin hasn’t protested Charles making him go outside and play catch or people-watch either, so perhaps they’re both happy to stay busy.
It takes half a day to reach the sea, though Charles doesn’t mind. He likes talking with Edwin, who’s been remarkably full of new ideas lately; he thinks they should try to find a proper place to stay that they can fix up together. Charles doesn’t know who rents to dead boys or how they would pay rent, but Edwin has an iron determination that he admires and he’s game to try most anything at least once.
When they reach the sea in the morning light, the grey mists slowly dissipating, Edwin leads him to a stony outcropping by the water.
“Have a seat,” Edwin says, gesturing to a large, flat rock.
Charles obliges, watching Edwin kick through a pile of pebbles. “What are you looking for?”
Edwin just makes a distracted noise, sifting the small stones aside until he uncovers something.
“Aha.” He scoops it up and shows it to Charles as he paces back over the uneven ground. It’s a round stone, roughly the size of Edwin’s palm.
“A rock?” Charles wonders if Edwin has forgotten why they came to the seaside. He’ll be collecting shells next or maybe building a sandcastle.
Edwin hops up on the rock next to him and says, “Listen.”
Edwin taps the stone against the broad rock they’re both seated on and Charles feels the echo of it through his ectoplasm. It’s a pleasing sound, resonant and round.
“Now you,” Edwin says, handing him the stone. It feels warm, like the trace of Edwin’s ghostly touch is still on it. That’s stupid, of course, since ghosts can’t feel, but Charles imagines sometimes that he might.
Charles mimics him, letter by letter, the two of them trading the stone back and forth. It’s easier to learn this way than by reading that stupid book. He can feel it, really feel it, even though it’s dulled to his dead senses. This is enough, Edwin’s firm voice repeating the letters over and over while the waves crash below them.
1996
Charles slips through the mirror and grins at Edwin, who’s haloed by the morning sun. “So what’s the plan then, today?” Edwin likes to sit at the desk and read, elbows tucked in primly. He sticks to routine so firmly that Charles could probably tell time by him and this is definitely his morning reading of the local news.
“When you decode the semaphore, you’ll get your answers,” Edwin says, very irritatingly. He gestures smoothly to the side without even looking up from his paper.
Charles turns to find an array of tiny figurines holding flags on the edge of the bookshelves. They look to be repurposed army men, though he’s quite certain he’s never seen plastic army men who move like this. Each one is signaling something in motion, sign by sign by sign. “Edwin, what on earth is this?”
“Minor animation spell,” Edwin says, looking up with a little smirk. “I saw no need for me to stand about vigorously practicing my semaphore when you are the one who is slacking.”
“Edwin,” Charles groans. “When will we even bloody need this? Morse code or a cipher, I’ve got no argument, but this is silly. Why should I ever be so far apart from you? And it would have to be me waving the flags on some rooftop or something because the damn things are in my backpack.”
“Precisely. Should you ever require my assistance, Charles, you should be able to signal for my aid in as many forms as may be necessary.” Edwin turns the page, shaking the paper so it falls neatly open.
Charles tries, he really does. He takes out his notes, scrawled and messy though they are, and tries to write down the code. He assumes there’s a hidden message here, maybe one of those terrible old-timey jokes that make Edwin snort with repressed laughter. Despite his best effort, he can’t make the words make sense.
“I think I’m translating this wrong,” Charles groans, tossing a handful of the little army men on the desk; highly offended, they leap up, running back into their regimental formation so they can start waving their flags at him pointedly in the “attention” signal.
Edwin looks at him coolly. “Why on earth would you translate something incorrectly?”
Charles counters, “Why would you write a message telling me there are biscuits in the cupboard?” They are ghosts, so the cabinets don’t hold biscuits because who on earth would eat them? “You said the message would tell me what today’s plan is.”
“Go look in the cupboard,” Edwin says, looking smug. “A good detective verifies his hypotheses.”
Charles sighs, making a show of his reluctance. It’s nice, he realizes, that neither he nor Edwin take each other’s play tantrums very seriously anymore. He opens the cupboard and finds another trio of army men in front of a little blue bag. He squints at them for a moment, working out that each one has a singular word before they loop.
“Happy birthday, Charles,” Edwin says quietly. “Grab the bag.”
“I can't...we don’t eat.” Charles grabs the bag still and then opens it to find little bone-shaped biscuits. When he looks up in surprise, Edwin is grinning.
“But dogs do. I thought we could perambulate in the direction of the dog park on our walk today and maybe make a few dogs very happy.”
“Edwin,” Charles says, melting. “Cheers, mate, that’s a lovely idea.”
Edwin wings his elbow at Charles and Charles tucks his free hand into the crook of Edwin’s arm, dog treats in the other. Edwin isn’t even fond of dogs, so this is terribly sweet and thoughtful. Charles makes sure to thank Edwin repeatedly, unable to stop smiling at Edwin in the pale sunshine.
2000
“They say,” Edwin explains, “that the ancient Spartans used a scytale to pass messages during their war campaigns.”
“A what?” Charles puts down the cricket ball he’d been tossing up and down and holds his hand out as Edwin approaches him with something in his fist. Edwin doesn’t drop it into his hand, but rather presses it in, wrapping Charles’ fingers around something firm and soft.
It’s a long leather strip, embossed at various points with clear letters. It’s nonsense as far as Charles can tell, reading, “M O I E T A U M R R Y R E B U Y A V E E” from start to finish.
“This is the message,” Edwin says. “The scytalae were the wooden sticks they could wrap the message around. If two people didn’t have the same size, then they wouldn’t know what the message was.”
Charles drapes the end over his palm and wraps it around his wrist a couple times to see what Edwin is saying. “So, you want me to find a wooden stick to prove I can decode this. Any stick at all? Are we going for a walk to the park?”
Edwin shakes his head. “For simplicity, it’s an object in our office.”
“For simplicity,” Charles teases. Edwin has clearly spent a considerable amount of time stamping letters into leather and he can’t even pretend that this is going to be a regular way they’ll send each other messages because it’s impractical. “Am I going to have to go find the Latin dictionary as well? You know St. Hils stopped teaching us Latin long before I got there. I mean, you could pick it up as an extra course, but I never did.”
“Neither did they teach you battle tactics,” Edwin says, looking smug.
“Edwin,” Charles says with growing delight. “Edwin, did you learn about this in your battle tactics class?” He holds his wrist up, looking at the jumbled gibberish across his forearm.
Edwin’s smugness vanishes, quickly replaced by faint embarrassment. He pinks, ducking his head slightly to hide his cheeks. “No. No, this was...ah, shall we say, independent study.”
Charles snorts. “Alright. Any hints, or shall I just begin? It’s clearly not me that I need to wind this around.” He lets the leather fall loosely off of his wrist and holds it up.
Edwin coughs. “No. No hints.”
It’s a silly afternoon, wrapping the leather strip around various things in the office to figure out what the code could possibly be. He has a guess as to what the size is (something less than the diameter of his forearm, but larger than a pencil) based on the size and spacing of the letters.
It takes him a silly amount of time to even think to pull his cricket bat out of his bag. He even wraps the strip around the Eternal Baguette before he gets to the cricket bat, though that only scatters some eternal crumbs on the carpet.
Edwin stops whatever he’s fussing with on the bookshelf when Charles pulls the bat out, which is a neat clue. Charles props the bat under his arm so he can apply the strip to the handle neatly and try to read it.
As he presses the very end of the leather wrap around the handle, the letters glow brightly and float off the leather.
“May your aim ever be true,” Charles reads slowly, watching the letters fade out of existence as he reads them.
The whole bat glitters for a second and then it all looks normal again. Charles turns to where Edwin is watching him, a pleased smile on his lips.
“So what was that?”
“Just a little spell. You’ll find it very hard to miss what you’re aiming for when you swing.”
“Aw, that’s brills, Edwin.” He hefts the bat idly, though the swing doesn’t feel any different with the spell. “Bet you could have taught those battle tactics blokes something, eh?” He pretends to swing it, making a little ‘whooshing’ noise. “Wouldn’t know what hit ‘em with a magical cricket bat.” He slings his arm over Edwin’s bony shoulders. “You ought to write a proper book with all your little notebook notes. Paine’s Compendium of Anti-Spectral Battle Tactics or some rot like that.” He can feel Edwin laugh under his arm. “We could sneak it into the St. Hils library for other Dead Boys who want to learn from Professor Paine.”
“You are absurd,” Edwin murmurs, looking thoroughly delighted at Charles’ approval.
2010
They’re hunting something. Edwin assures him that it can’t be Nessie, no matter how Scottish the lake is or how many fish with eerie bite marks wash up on the shore. This isn’t a ghost problem per se, but it’s not like human authorities are equipped to deal with it either and the ghost who came to them for revenge on the creature described something that genuinely poses a danger to the people who live nearby. If Charles can prevent a kid from getting chomped by Nessie’s evil twin, then he will.
He just, you know, probably won’t enjoy it. It’s not like he’s got something against lakes, but at least with a haunted house you can see the shit trying to grab you. The dark, cold water is creepy in a different way, even if cold isn’t really a problem for ghosts.
They split up, though Charles hates it, because the night is only so long and they have to finish this tonight before the moon cycle resets. They haven’t found anything yet and half the night is gone; Charles thinks, with the sort of dread that makes him want to dig his heels in and yank against the leash of Edwin’s logical plan, that whatever is fueling this nightmare creature might have been chucked in the lake. That means one Dead Boy has to swim into it and he knows, he knows, he just fucking knows it will be him. He sighs.
He pauses. The sigh seemed to rattle through the leaves on the path longer than his undead breath would sustain. He turns slowly. There’s nothing in the still night, no movement or sound. He can’t even see Edwin tramping around the other half of the lake because they are hunting in darkness. The creature won’t appear in light, which is part of Edwin’s theory about it being some kind of magical shadow-nightmare construct.
Still, he’s sure it’s out tonight, even if he can locate it. They just have to find it before it finds them.
He turns back, walking along the lake bed. There’s something soothing about the soft rushes tapping his left hip with each step, even if he can’t really feel them.
He keeps sharp, looking around and waiting for a sign. There must be a clue here, something anchoring the creature to this place. Something catches his eye up in the trees around the lake, far away from the mud and plants he’s trudging through.
The moon is flickering through the leaves, their agitated fluttering in the wind making Charles strangely nervous. It’s like the whole world is atremble.
Except there’s no moon through the trees. There's no moon tonight at all. It’s a mirror lit by a flashlight, Charles realizes belatedly. The pattern is regular, something recognizable. He reads the flashes, the Morse code familiar to him after all their practice.
LIGHT
ON
RUN
LOUDLY
HERE
Charles trusts Edwin implicitly, so he takes off through the brush, stomping his feet and hollering like he’s not scared to death of some stupid lake monster. He can figure out at least half of Edwin’s plan because the creature is definitely hunting them and they might as well give it an obvious target so they can locate it.
He pulls his lantern out of the bag on the go, holding it aloft and trying not to turn around because it will only slow him down. When you run for your life, you can’t afford to look back.
Still, he hears it, something larger than a seal slapping along in the mud behind him, snarling. There’s a splash and he can see the wake of water rising like an arrow next to him as it overtakes him.
It lunges out of the lake, all needle-teeth and a terrifyingly-agile long neck swinging towards him. He manages to stop his forward momentum enough to juke to the side and only get hit with a flipper instead of caught by the teeth.
It winds him, which is information enough to know that this creature will hurt ghosts just as well as living humans. It snarls lowly and lunges for him again, but it’s slower on land and it dives back into the water in frustration as he leaps out of reach.
Charles runs, still with his light, though no longer yelling. He’s wheezing painfully, but he knows where Edwin is and it’s not far now at all.
With the lantern aloft, he can see the creature every time it slithers up on the bank of the lake, teeth glinting sickly in the light. He can also see Edwin crouched on a low tree branch ahead of him, notebook in one hand as he beckons Charles on frantically.
Charles runs to him, trying to focus on Edwin’s face instead of the lumbering thumps of the creature lurching along behind him. He’s gotten it down the path a little, further from the lake, and he hopes like hell that helps with something. Slowing it down out of the water is not good enough and Charles doesn’t particularly feel like risking his ghostly limbs leaping into a tree while the creature snaps at him with that horrible jaw.
“Charles, down,” Edwin shouts, glowing-red palm outstretched to him.
Charles drops and rolls to the side of the path on instinct, following Edwin’s orders and dodging the creature’s next steps. His lantern sits abandoned in the mud and there’s no time to grab anything from his bag because the creature is already nearly upon him. He doesn’t look up because if he’s going to die a second death, he’d rather not remember this.
There’s an unholy screech and then Charles is soaked in a heavy, stinking rain. He opens his eyes to see that the creature has been blasted into bloody soup, drenching him and the pathway for several metres. He scrubs his face with his sleeve pointlessly; his jacket is just as sodden with blood and mud and abstract viscera as his face and hair.
“Charles?” Edwin must have climbed down because he’s carefully picking his way across the path to Charles. “Charles, are you alright?”
“God, I love you, mate,” Charles pants, trying desperately not to shiver, as he gets to his feet. He can still feel the blood and lake slime, dripping and oozing down his back.
“The sentiment is undoubtedly reciprocated,” Edwin says, before exhaling gustily. “Very well done, Charles.”
“I’m not the one who blew Nessie up, yeah?” Charles laughs stupidly, watching the tension seep out of Edwin.
“I could not have accomplished that without you. I can see you’ve been keeping up your practice.”
“Of course, mate. I have to make sure I know when you’re saying something important, don’t I?”
Edwin smiles faintly. “Indeed. Now, I think a bit of freshening up would do you good. Then we can go home without worrying that you may be leaving a trail all over London like some kind of enormous snail.” He takes Charles’ chin in his hand and says something in a language Charles doesn’t understand. There’s a brief roaring in Charles’ ears and then a flash of orange light.
When it all fades, he feels…almost warm. He glances down to find himself clean and dry, which is a relief. Edwin looks smug, which is also a relief because Edwin only looks smug when everything is alright.
“Home?” Edwin suggests politely.
Charles nods. Time to go home indeed.
2017
There’s a note on the desk, Charles’ name scrawled on the outside in Edwin’s neat handwriting. He opens it to find an unreadable jumble of letters. “Edwin,” he calls absentmindedly, trying to see if they’re anagrams maybe. He can’t quite make the words go. “Oi, Edwin.”
“Hmm?” Edwin hums, sounding like a cat being woken up. He’s in the anteroom, fastidiously cleaning his desk pens; though he has a magical pen he carries on cases, his desk pens are an assortment of fountain pens he’s picked up over the years with a variety of inks he makes himself. Right now he’s assessing the amount of corrosion an iron gall ink can create in the feed and the nib of one pen (and taking detailed notes with yet another fountain pen). He puts down his pen and the bulbous syringe he uses to flush out the feed so he can peer around the doorway at Charles. “Yes?”
“What’s this then?”
Edwin grins. “Substitution cipher. I’ve left you some paper and my pen on the desk so you can work it out.”
“Yeah?” Charles looks at the paper again, raises his eyebrows teasingly at Edwin. “What’s the prize?”
“Just a little something I picked up on our last trip to the Bizarre Bazaar.”
“Aw, Edwin, that tacky place?” It’s good fun, to be sure, but the magic tricks are all tourist crap.
“It was an unexpected treasure, I assure you. I think you will be pleased when you see what I haggled for. Of course, you must solve the cipher first.” He nods and then settles back into his pen routine.
Charles sits at the desk, cross-legged in Edwin’s chair. He picks up Edwin’s magical, endlessly-inked pen and twirls it smoothly between his fingers as he considers the note. A substitution cipher means that he just has to figure out how to rewrite some of the smaller words and the rest should start to show up as a clue. He and Edwin have played this game before, though not usually with something this long.
He starts rewriting the text as a series of blank spaces in the notebook and then gets to work trying to brute force the three letter words.
He’s puzzling through it, having decided that the majority of the single letters are “I” rather than “A” in the substitution, when Edwin wanders over to him.
“Charles, where’s the new ink you brought me?”
“In the drawer.” Charles taps the drawer beside himself without looking down. “It’s in the little box next to the paperclips.”
“Thank you.” Edwin rounds the table and opens the drawer, lifting out the little vial of pearlescent liquid. Charles had gotten it on a silly whim, since it purported to make writing glow in the dark and he thought it would amuse Edwin.
Edwin lingers there at his elbow, leaning in to peer at the page.
“Still haven’t figured it out,” Charles informs him, tapping the pen on the page lightly. He thinks he has a few words, but he’s not sure.
“Hmmm.” Edwin rests a careful hand on his shoulder. “Shall we go for a walk? Perhaps you can come back to it with fresh eyes.”
“Nah, I’m in it, yeah? When I finish we can walk down to the theater.” Edwin loves watching the silly fancy people at the old theater and sometimes they sneak into the orchestra pit to watch plays up close. It’s the kind of fun only dead boys can have and the few theater ghosts are mostly good sports. It’ll be a nice way to spend the evening after Charles solves this. “Maybe, uh, could you tell me if I’m dead wrong?”
“You are making progress,” Edwin reassures him, squeezing his shoulder. “I shall leave you to it.”
He plods away, filling pages of Edwin’s endless notebook with his idiotic scribble, until he arrives at something that is both coherent and also terribly Edwin. It’s a quote that reads:
“It will be pleasure and delight if I may serve you as a friend; as a friend, but all I have ever learned, all I can ever do, shall be for you and those you love. There are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights.” -Bram Stoker
This points Charles towards the bookshelf, which Edwin has organized very tidily. Charles finds the fiction section at the top and then works his way along the spines to the ‘S’ author names. He never read Dracula , but he didn’t imagine that it had such quotes about friendship in it. The movies got that part wrong, he reckons.
He tugs the dark leather spine out, hoping he doesn’t have to go searching through the pages for the exact quote. Instead, he finds the tip of a red ribbon bookmark. The bookmark is not pressed between the pages, but rather dropped down the spine of the tome, which is rather odd.
Charles tugs on the pretty, red ribbon bookmark and unearths a pair of thin gold rings tied to the end of it, nestled in the space between the spine and bound pages.
He pulls them loose and turns to Edwin to hold them up, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. “You got magic rings from the Bizarre Bazaar? What are they meant to do, summon a djinn?” He rubs them together and raises an eyebrow.
Edwin gives him a long-suffering look. “Obviously not. They glow.”
“Oh.” Charles looks at them, not glowing. “Sure, mate, that could be helpful.” Probably in the dark when they don’t have flashlights, a little glow could come in handy. It’s about what he expects of the Bizarre Bazaar.
“Charles.” Edwin holds out his hand imperiously. “Give me one.”
Charles does, dropping one into Edwin’s palm. It’s nice that Edwin got them each one, so neither of them have to be in the dark; they don’t talk about it, but the dark is only bearable together.
Charles flicks the other ring up and then catches it idly in his fist. He might have shoved it in his pocket, but Edwin says, “Wait. Step back and then look at the ring.”
Charles takes a couple of steps back and then opens his hand.
“If you look,” Edwin says, pointing at the ring in his hand, “it is illuminated to indicate the presence of the other ring.”
Charles glances down. In the palm of his hand, he can see the faint glow on one side of the ring. If he turns slightly, the glow stays oriented to Edwin, a subtle and delicate compass.
He slips the ring on his forefinger. “You are so bloody brilliant, mate. I don’t know how you think of these things.”
“It was the film we saw,” Edwin admits with quiet pride. He slips his ring on as well. “The one with the wizard and the girl.”
“Howl’s Moving Castle .” They’d snuck into a theater showing a bunch of cartoons, some of which had been surprisingly emotional. It had been a fun weekend.
“Yes. He gave her a ring so they could find each other again and I thought that such an enchantment would be rather facile given a ring with enough capacity to sustain the magical force; you see, the orientation spell will act somewhat like the tides, pulling with varied force based on proximity, so it could snap a lesser ring. This ring was both well-crafted and the materials were spelled for endurance before it was forged. The rings should last as long as we do.”
“Edwin,” Charles says, soft and fond. “You’re so clever. I couldn’t ask for a better mate, could I?”
“I should think not,” Edwin says without any rancor. “Who else would learn a poltergeist banishment in an extinct Frisian dialect for you?”
Charles grins at him. “Forget that. You like learning your dusty, old languages. You also hit it in the face with that marble bookend. See, that’s how I know you love me; you actually listened to what I said about throwing with your whole body.” It had been fucking perfect too, a beautiful pivot of his leg and the arc of the heavy bookend sailing over him to land loudly against the cheek of the poltergeist trying to smother him. Charles had told him that it was reminiscent of Sarfraz Nawaz at his best and Edwin had looked rather pleased, understanding Charles’ point even if he didn’t get the exact reference.
“I always listen,” Edwin says, tilting his head. “You ought to try it.” There’s a teasing glint in his eye. “Imagine what we could accomplish if you listened to me before haring off.”
2024
It’s all the tumblers in a lock clicking at once, the sun rising full brightness, the last piece of a puzzle slotting into place, and both their hands gripping the door knob for dear life while the Night Nurse shouts imminent threats at them.
“Oh,” Charles says again, wonderment still washing over him. He hasn’t been listening closely enough.
“In a minute!” Edwin shouts through the door, though his worried eyes never leave Charles’ face.
“That was not our bargain, you insolent child!” Her accent makes the words more biting, though the larger concern is the way she ominously rattles the handle.
“Charles,” Edwin murmurs. “Charles, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—“
“No, no, it’s fine, Edwin.” Charles squeezes Edwin’s arm. “We’ll have the rest of time to figure it out. I know it’s not what we wanted, but she has to take both of us. That was the deal, anyway. We’ll figure it out, like we always do.”
Edwin nods and they twist the door open together.
He is still a little distracted, so he misses some of what happens next. Niko does something terribly clever and the Night Nurse storms off. Jenny seems to accept their existence about as well as she handles anything, so that’s a win.
They can go home. No demon, witch, or cat deity has a hold on them anymore, so long as they can stay one step ahead. And so they should go home, though they’re both reluctant to leave the girls behind. They divide and conquer, Edwin to Niko and Charles to Crystal.
He lingers in her bedroom, trying to break it to her gently. She’s been a bit delicate since she got her memories back. “We don’t want to leave, yeah? But I reckon I ought to get Edwin far away from the Cat King, just in case that manky bastard shows up again.”
“I should go home too,” Crystal says, staring out the window miserably. “I should...my parents should know where I am even if they don’t care.”
“We can go with you,” Charles offers. Edwin will kill him, probably, but he makes the offer anyway.
“Don’t be silly. You have your work to get back to. I’ll be fine.”
“Not...er...well, not just work, I imagine.” He imagines and imagines and imagines and it’s probably good that he can’t sleep for the dreams he’d have.
Crystal turns away from the window, brow crinkling slightly. “Sorry?”
“Well.” Charles sticks his hands in his pockets and then pulls them out to rest on his hips and then hooks his thumbs through his belt loops. “Ah, well, Edwin says he loves me?” It comes out a question, like he can’t see Edwin saying it so clearly in his mind that it feels real even now.
“Charles!” Crystal shrieks. He jumps, watching her flap her hands. “Charles, oh my god, are you serious?”
“Yes?”
She makes a terrifying little squeaking noise, but her eyes look happy. “I fucking knew it. I have to tell Niko, I fucking knew it.”
“Hey, come on. Niko doesn’t know yet.” Charles defends Edwin or maybe himself or the two of them together.
“My ass,” Crystal snorts. “That bitch probably already sold the rights to your story to an anime producer. God, she is so going to believe in love again if you kiss Edwin in front of her.”
“What? I’m not—I mean, why would I kiss Edwin in front of her?”
“What...” Crystal stills. “Do you not love Edwin?” This seems very upsetting to her, though he can’t imagine why.
“Of course I love him. He’s my best mate, always.” That’s never ever been the question.
“But not like he loves you, huh?” She sighs.
“I’m not...I didn’t say...” Charles gives up. “I don’t fucking know. I think he’s been trying to tell me for thirty-odd years and I’ve been a bit dense, yeah? I need a minute to wrap my head around it all and deal with seeing fucking Hell before I make any sort of sense of our lives now. So the first step is for us to go home and have a bit of normal. God knows Edwin doesn’t need me mucking it all up while he’s still trying to figure out how to remove whatever tracker Hell seems to have on his soul.”
“That’s horrendously responsible,” Crystal declares, mouth pursed. “Disgusting, Charles. You love him so much you’re being sensible? I hate it and both of you and I need to pack immediately because Niko and I absolutely have to follow you two idiots and make sure you don’t both do the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard of.”
“Unfair,” Charles says rather sharply. “I don’t think it’s stupid to wait to—”
“You. Went. To. Hell. For. Him.” Crystal bites out. “That was incredibly stupid. Beautiful, moving, inspiring. Stupid.”
Crystal’s bedroom door flies open and Niko leans in, Edwin hovering behind her as she shrieks, “Crystal! Get packed! We have to go to London.”
“I am so ahead of you, babe,” Crystal says, springing forward. “You two, go home.” She points at Edwin. “I know where you live and I will find you. Do not do anything dumb until we get there.” She grabs Niko and the two of them run off to Niko’s room.
Edwin lingers in the doorway, watching them for a moment and then turning back to Charles. “Should I—erm, we be worried?”
“Mate, I don’t even know.” Charles sinks down to the foot of Crystal’s bed. “Did Niko take the news that we’re leaving well?”
Edwin laughs mirthlessly and sits on the bed next to him. “No, she took it like that.” He gestures at her bedroom door. “Any chance you might be amenable to renaming our agency to the Two Dead Boys and Two Mad Girls Agency?” He lifts an eyebrow at Charles and Charles elbows him gently.
Charles sighs. “I do want to go home.” He tilts his head to tap against Edwin's. “We should go home. It might give us a full two days before those two show up with some kind of scheme.”
“Oh, I definitely was sensing a scheme,” Edwin agrees, leaning his head into Charles’ touch. “Perhaps even a plot or some machinations. Let us bid them farewell, that we may be better equipped when they wash up on our shore.” He sounds long-suffering, but Charles can tell when Edwin loves someone.
He pauses, thinking. He can tell, is the thing. He’s never once doubted that Edwin loved him since Edwin showed up to shepherd him through a gentle death. He didn’t understand, perhaps, the depth or tone of that love, but he never doubted its existence.
“Charles?” Edwin is still, soft.
“Yeah, let’s go home.” He pats Edwin on the thigh. “I’m ready for us to go home."
Everything after that is chaos because though they can mirror-hop home, Charles does insist on helping the girls pack a little before they go. Even home, reveling in their comforting safety, life is busy. Edwin is doing research on Hell, Charles is following up on some non-urgent cases they left behind when they went to America, and both of them are trying to cope gracefully with the elephant in the room. Charles learns that he can make Edwin blush just by gazing at him long enough. He also abruptly learns that Edwin can turn him into marshmallow fluff by resting a gentle hand on his knee when Charles is sitting on top of the desk jabbering away.
Edwin notices, surely, that Charles suddenly loses his train of thought, but in his perpetual kindness, he refrains from mentioning it.
And then the Night Nurse returns in her terrifying glory, popping out of their mail like some kind of unearthly jack-in-the-box. All Charles can feel is the remembered terror of being trapped, watching his best friend be dragged to Hell. It can’t happen again, it won’t happen again, he can't let it happen again.
It brings an awful clarity to him, something he only recognizes in the sweet relief of the aftermath. The Night Nurse and her boss are gone, so Charles hears no noise but the silent-falling snow and their own pointless breaths. There’s a moment where they both lock eyes and then they’re in each other’s arms, holding onto each other desperately. Charles can feel Edwin shaking, tremors running through him under Charles’ hands. And Charles...Charles doesn’t want to let go.
He understands now. Any doubts he had have melted away and he knows with perfect certainty that there will never be anyone but Edwin for him. Edwin is his world, on Earth as in Hell, and not even Death could part them.
All he has to do is find a way to say it, in those slow days that follow. The girls aren’t in London yet and anyway, Charles doesn’t want this to be for anyone else. It’s between the two of them, those words he cannot force out of his cowardly mouth.
But Edwin managed it and so Charles will have to say it because it’s Edwin’s turn to listen to him. That’s what gives him the idea, actually, to find a way to say what Edwin has so bravely said all along.
While Edwin is out on an errand, Charles digs in his backpack for the little army men; they’ve played with them occasionally and Charles still finds them unaccountably cute. They’re rather irate with him as he spills them onto the desktop, hopping up and down absurdly when he laughs quietly at them.
Once they’ve settled, he picks through them, collecting enough for his message. The charm that animates them is very simple, so choreographing their arrangement takes very little time.
This is good, as Edwin steps back in through the mirror not ten minutes after Charles is done.
“What’s this?” Edwin’s eagle eyes catch on the little figures instantly. “Charles?” He goes to one knee, quickly reading the message at eye level on the desk top.
Charles wrings his hands, waiting.
“Charles.” Edwin turns to him, mouth dropping in a little ‘o’ of surprise. “What do you mean ‘Teach me how to say I love you’?”
“You’ve taught me every other bloody language,” Charles says, smiling helplessly at Edwin. “Why not the most important words I’ll ever say?”
“You’re quite serious?” Edwin stands, draws himself up. He looks like he is poised to run, rocking onto the balls of his feet gracefully. He takes a half-step closer. And then one closer again, hesitant and hopeful.
“Edwin, I’ve never said it like that. But I followed you out of the attic at St. Hilarion’s and I followed you to this agency and I followed you into Hell. I mean, I even follow your lead when we dance. If you love me…if you still love me, then I’ll follow you there too.”
Edwin stretches a hand out between them, as quietly demanding as he ever is. Charles takes it without hesitation and lets Edwin draw him in. Edwin arranges them like they’re going to waltz, one hand on Charles’ waist and the other clasped gently in Charles’ hand. He pushes Charles just a little, enough for them to fall into the familiar motions of a simple box step as he says, “You know how to say it, Charles. Just as you always do, just as we have always done.”
They’re so close like this, heat pooling at Charles’ back where Edwin’s fingertips are creasing his shirt. Charles looks at Edwin, the kind smile on his lips, and feels his undead heart pound to the rhythm of their synchronized steps. He exhales. “I love you.” He taps his finger on Edwin’s shoulder, .. ._.. _. , the little glowing ring amplifying each tap. I love you I love you I love you. He means it, his whole soul falling into Edwin’s grasp.
“I knew teaching you that ,” Edwin murmurs, tilting his head to brush his cheek on the back of Charles’ hand, “would be useful.”
Charles laughs and takes his hands off of Edwin so he can throw his arms around Edwin’s neck and hug him.
“My clever love,” Edwin murmurs, allowing Charles to tuck his head into Edwin’s shoulder. Edwin keeps them moving, his hands laced loosely around the small of Charles’ back, and hums quietly as they retrace decades of footsteps on these floors.